Digitalization in the healthcare sector is finally making progress. Today, I would like to introduce you to a potential winner of this development – CompuGroup Medical.

Company Profile Based in Koblenz, the group is one of the European market leaders for software and IT services in the healthcare sector. Customers include medical practices, pharmacies, laboratories, hospitals, health insurance companies, and care facilities.

Beneficiary of E-prescriptions and Digital Patient Records After much back and forth, the German Bundestag has finally cleared the way for an important step towards the long-overdue digitalization of the healthcare system with the „Law on the Improved Use of Health Data“ at the end of 2023. From 2024, there will be electronic prescriptions and digital patient records. Both will contribute to improving medical care in Germany.

One of the biggest beneficiaries is likely to be CompuGroup Medical. The company provides the necessary hardware and software and already has a broad customer base of 1.6 million users in the healthcare sector, including medical practices, pharmacies, laboratories, hospitals, and social facilities in 60 countries.

Advantages of Electronic Patient Records In the future, electronic patient records (ePR) will ensure that doctors can treat their patients optimally, taking into account all previous diagnoses. Previously, important patient data was distributed across servers of practices and hospitals where patients were treated in the past. Important findings had to be sent between doctors via mail, fax or email. Often, these were not complete, which could lead to errors in treatment.

The ePR is a personal data storage that accompanies people throughout their lives. It gives treating doctors access to all diagnoses and examinations, laboratory results, prescribed medications, and performed therapies. This brings numerous benefits to patients: Multiple examinations can be avoided, interactions between medications can be better considered, more accurate diagnoses can be made, and better therapies can be prescribed.

Although electronic patient records were introduced in 2021, they were only offered as an optional service, of which only about 1% of the 74 million legally insured people took advantage. By 2025, it is expected that 80% of them will use it.

E-prescriptions become the standard The option of an electronic prescription has been available for some time. However, the majority of the approximately 500 million prescriptions redeemed in Germany were still in paper form. From 2024, the e-prescription is intended to become the binding standard. Instead of the pink slip, patients will receive a code on their mobile phone or electronic health card. The prescription can also be redeemed via an app.

Compared to the paper version, the electronic prescription offers several advantages for patients: There is no need to wait for the doctor’s signature. In addition, the prescription no longer needs to be handed out by the practice team on site, but can be loaded onto an app or the electronic health card.

Profit margins expected to finally rise In recent years, CompuGroup has been able to continuously increase its revenues, but there is room for improvement in terms of profit development. This has been stagnant for a long time.

Thanks to the advancing digitalization, analysts expect a significant increase in profit margins in the coming years. If this works out, the stock price could also soon be significantly higher.